The inspirations and origins for our stories.

It came from Jonathan Louis Duckworth

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Jonathan Louis Duckworth’s story “The Last Doctor” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 15 April 2022. Who even remembers these things? Obviously the story was partly inspired by the pandemic we’re all living through, although the disease in the story has little resemblance to COVID. I’ve always loved plague doctors, and the story’s titular Doctor is a non-traditional example of one. The story is set within a larger universe of stories, what I call the …

It came from Amman Sabet

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Amman Sabet’s story “The Ghosts of Daughters Possible” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 8 April 2022. The speculative aspects of “The Ghosts of Daughters Possible” come from personal struggles in love and family. The setting, however, is inspired by American Impressionist paintings. I was trying to break through a nasty writing block amidst Covid-19 lockdowns and the winter landscapes from this era somehow helped me get where I needed to be. Something about natural …

It came from Wade Dargin

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Wade Dargin’s story “The Dragon and the Unicorn” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 1 April 2022. The story began as a writing exercise. My original intent was to write an atmospheric tale with themes of survival and endurance. I had a clear idea of the main character and setting but little else. The story evolved as I wrote it. When the major elements came into better focus the story took on some aspects of …

It came from Felix Taylor

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Felix Taylor’s story “The Year of the Bright Lands” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 25 March 2022. The idea to write “The Year of the Bright Lands” came with an image of a row of crops suspended over an abyss, buffeted around by a mysterious wind from below. Then came the decision to write a story about two children who find a way down into the abyss. I don’t usually go for plot when …

It came from Erin Keating

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Erin Keating’s story “The Future in a Wash Basin” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 18 March 2022. “The Future in a Wash Basin” began at the end. When I’m coming up with ideas for stories, I tend to think of interesting or unusual images that I can build a character and a world around. For this story, that image was of a woman scrying in a compact mirror. From there I worked backward, trying …

It came from Will Gwaun

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Will Gwaun’s story “Mission and Submission” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 11 March 2022. As with most of my stories, they seem to appear out of ideas sort of slamming together and producing a narrative. In the past these were usually pretty abstract and weird, (‘What about the medieval catholic idea of itemised penance per mile of pilgrimage, combined with the technical problems of robots creating maps of their environments!?’ is an example of …